Those enthusiastic about the LTTE should seek Wanni “citizenship” and give their shoulders to their terrorist leaders instead of being a bad example to a new generation of young Sri Lankan Canadians. They could seek help from Canada Immigration to deport them.

Siva Sunderam in Toronto and Raja Segaran in New York

The Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) spokesperson David Poopalapillai, said that he did not know Sahilal Sabaratnam who was listed in 2005 in a press release as the director of communications of CTC. Sabaratnam was one of the three Canadians of Sri Lankan origin who were arrested in the US three days ago on charges related to purchase of arms for the LTTE and bribing US bureaucrats for certain favours that involved illegal activities.

Poopalapillai who lent vociferous objections to Canada’s ban of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam along with his CTC colleagues, went to the extent of saying that he didn’t think any Sri Lankans in Canada would knowingly contribute support to the rebel group meaning the LTTE.

His assertion is strange indeed. He belongs to a small group of people heading the CTC who are exceptionally enthusiastic – or perhaps who were until two days ago – actively supportive of the LTTE in Canada. If ever a caterpillar gets close to a fire it wriggles in agony and in view of the arrests made in the US and Canada, David Poopalapillai’s predicament is understandable. A person like him who was on the forefront of promoting LTTE interests in Canada should have the guts to stand up to his commitment.

They say cowards die a thousand times.

Poopalapillai chose to run away from his native Batticaloa in the east of Sri Lanka just like thousands of Tamils for reasons of atrocities not only by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces but also the LTTE; may be more because of the latter. Poopalapillai may have had his own reasons for fleeing from Sri Lanka but now that the LTTE is becoming exposed as a terrorist risk in any country, an outfit that he and his CTC colleagues support so vigorously, where will he seek his refuge now?

In the days and weeks to come many like Poopalapillai will disown the LTTE and even claim that they were always against this terror group. Some if not many of the Tamil tabloids that unashamedly supported the LTTE may even fold up for good and that goes for CMR/TVI, Geetavani, AM1430 and the CTR as well.

The CMR/TVI even if it continues to exist will have to send to the meadows its political analyst S Thiruchelvam and his colleagues who have been experts at misinformation and therefore mischief. The Mullakkam tabloid will have to accept the reality that the world was not created on the day Prabhakaran was born.

As far as the 84-paged advertising trash Uthayan and others are concerned, the least said is better because already they are consigned to the garbage before they are read. Strangely during the last few days Tamils in Toronto were only reading the English dailies The Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, The National Post and The Sun which indicates their hunger for reliable news. Unfortunately a good number of Canadian Tamils do not have the skill to read English and they remain victims of hyenas that Tamil tabloids are!

It is a well known fact that Canada has been the largest source of funds for the LTTE and these were raised mainly through dubious means, threats and extortion. The Human Rights Watch Report which David Poopalapillai bitterly denounced along with his CTC colleagues Nehru Guna, Gukan Sriskantharajah President Sitha Sithampalam of the World Tamil Movement, Harini Sivalingam and others indicated the extent to which the LTTE, its agents and several other organizations raised massive funds.

Some of the accused also face charges of attempting to bribe U.S. federal officials into getting the Tigers removed from the government's list of terrorist organizations, and with trying to obtain classified information.

The three Canadians of Sri Lankan origin who were arrested in the U.S. last week have been identified as Sathajhan Sarachandran, Sahilal Sabaratnam and Thiruthanikan Thanigasalam; they range in age from 26 to 37.

Several Tamil establishments have been registered as non-profit organizations in Canada only to raise funds for the LTTE. Reports following the arrests made in the US and Canada reveal how funds collected in Canada are used in the purchase of arms for the LTTE.

One could observe how foolish Poopalapillai is when he asks as to who will give money to something illegal and added: “I don’t think any Tamil would do that and break the law.” This man is evidently talking for all the Tamils in Canada and yet is unaware the evils and cancerous bursts the society suffers and in this respect, the personnel of the CTC itself have a great deal to answer.

After all they are the successors of the infamous Federation of Associations of Canadian Tamils (FACT) which even tried to inveigle in former Prime Minister Paul Martin and caused him a great deal of embarrassment. Did they not raise thousands of dollars for the LTTE aware that most of it would be used for the purchase of arms?

These arrests made in the US and Canada are just the beginning, a mere trickle. This activity has gone for some years and there are many culprits out there and one by one, they are going to be called up to answer charges. We suggest to David Poopalapillai to prepare a good press statement and make several copies of it so that he can hand over to the press every time arrests are made. Naturally, he would deny them like the Ostrich that pokes its head into the sand but exposes all its obvious behind.

Maybe Poopalapillai never had the chance or did not want to read what John Thompson who has studied the Tigers for the Mackenzie Institute, a political think tank, said about the LTTE and its arms purchase methods and sources of finances. Thompson told CIBC: "I'd say most of the money for this attempted arms purchase in the U.S. came from Canada, probably from Toronto."

Thompson also said the Tigers rely upon support from the Diaspora of Tamil refugees in Western Europe, North America and Australia, many of whom the LTTE helped to smuggle to countries around the world. Alien smuggling is a part of LTTE underworld activities, evidently its biggest source of revenue. The LTTE has its own alien smuggling agents posted in many countries and in Bangkok, Thailand they have an arms purchase mission.

While the arrests were being made in the US and Canada, authorities in Thailand arrested three Sri Lankans, two of them Tamils and the other a Sinhalese who were procuring arms for the LTTE. They were arrested while trying to ship a quantity of arms and ammunition to Mullaitivu, which consisted of a variety of pistols and 45,000 rounds of ammunition.

Thai authorities have informed Sri Lanka. The three have been identified as Asirvatham Sathyapalan of Jaffna, Thevarajah Sashiharan of Nedunkerny and U. G. Gunapala. The three were recently released from prison after serving a three-year term.

People like Poopalapillai who are so very enthusiastic about the LTTE should seek Wanni “citizenship” and give their shoulders to their terrorist leaders instead of being a bad example to a new generation of young Sri Lankan Canadians. May be they could seek help from Canada Immigration to deport them.

The news about the arms purchase attempt in the US and the exposure that this is part of a big time network with centres even in some South Asian countries is causing considerable concern in India particularly in Tamilnadu.

There have been reports about clandestine meetings of LTTE personnel with Tamilnadu politicians in Singapore and later in Bangkok and recently, Thirumavalavan was a guest of several Tiger supporters in Toronto. Such are apparent signs of collusions that must be watched with great care.

In their reactions to the Human Rights Watch (HRW) Report, the CTC leaders not only showed their wrath and fury at the exposure but also their hurt feelings because the Tigers came under fire.

David Poopalapillai claims he and his Canadian Tamil Congress (CTC) have a membership of over 10,000. They conduct business as if they speak for the entire Tamil community in Canada. This was what they did at a press conference they held following the arrests made in the US and Canada of seven Canadians of Sri Lankan origin including a former spokesperson of the CTC on charges of arms purchase and attempting to bribe US bureaucrats to perform certain illegal operations.

In the said press conference a highly flustered and much perturbed Poopalapillai marking himself as the national spokesperson, dismissed the arrests as an isolated incident over which he charged the press was unnecessarily attempting to throw dirt on the Tamil community. He asserted the Tamils are a law-abiding people who are committed to peaceful coexistence. It was obvious, the main point of this press conference was to distant himself and the CTC from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). His colleagues too shared his claims; equally his agitation as well.

During the last three years in particular some of the members of the CTC especially those still doing their university studies have visited Wanni as some kind of volunteers and this may expose them to R CMP inquiries. One of the arrested persons, a Waterloo University student was supposed to have made elaborate plans as to how such visitors should help the Wanni Tigers by smuggling certain articles that would in the normal circumstances would be forbidden.

Such distancing all of a sudden would be virtually impossible because the CTC and its membership are virtually interwoven with the LTTE front organizations such as the World Tamil Movement (WTM) and the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO). In other words the press conference was a drama that could be titled Panic Stations or better still SOS from Tiger Menace. The press conference may have had the ulterior motive of diverting the RCMP away from them and certainly appeared to be a Conference of Cowards. How can such people claim to speak for the Tamil community in Canada?

Just because there are about 250,000 Tamils in Canada most of them in the GTA no Ponnar, Muththar or Kanthar can gather together a few people and claim to speak for the entire community. There must be an organization for such kind of national representation and the CTC is far from it. It is a gathering of some interested people who gave an impression as Tamil Tiger enthusiasts.

The communal structure of the Tamils is such, it has its uniqueness and peculiarities founded and established over time immemorial based on various social factors that have made them a non-homogenous community. Apart from others, those opposed to the LTTE could never have been members of the CTC.

It was evident David Poopalapillai had not done his homework before presenting himself and his team at the press conference. There was a time the Toronto Police had to have a special unit to confront the Tamil gang problem and there were many of them. Surely his CTC colleague Nehru Guna could have helped him to understand all that happened during the time the Toronto Police was having some difficulty communicating with the community.

There were many concerned Tamils who felt that the pro-LTTE Toronto organizations were not happy about the Law Enforcement People dabbling in their affairs. Perhaps the LTTE was fretful and nervous that their underworld activities in Canada would become exposed. The LTTE activities involved alien and drugs smuggling, money laundering and forced monopoly over certain business activities.

Poopalapillai should have also had a pretty good idea of how many Tamils are in prisons for various crimes, some of them terror-based, those deported from the country and the kind of problems that has beset and beleaguered the community if his CTC is truly representative of the Tamils in Canada.

Early this year he was one of those who strongly denounced the Human Rights Watch Report that chastised the LTTE. The report spoke about a widespread campaign to intimidate Tamil individuals and families to subscribe to the LTTE to buy arms for use in the “Final War” against the Sri Lankan Government.

It was reported that members of the Tamil community were aggressively pursued and extorted by Tamil Tiger agents raising money for attacks in their homeland using children in the LTTE fighting cadres and young women as suicide bombers against the Government of Sri Lanka.

The Human Rights Report said that intimidating bagmen pressurized Canada's Tamil population of about 250,000 to lend money, re-mortgage their homes or even skip meals to help fund the fight for a separate Sri Lankan state. One person told OMNI Television he was asked to get a second mortgage on his house. He also said that he knew some families who had given $2,000, while others had given $5,000

Some Tamils found they couldn't refuse the request "because their relatives still live in Sri Lanka." Those who couldn’t pay a requested sum were warned they would be "taught a lesson." One individual who was unemployed when approached by the Tigers was told that he should cut one meal per day to enable him to give to the LTTE. The fund collectors never revealed their identity not even their status with the LTTE and were pretty harsh and demanding whenever they called at the doors of Tamil homes.Even the elderly and the infirm were threatened with dire consequences.

They were so well organized with the addresses of Tamil homes and the names of the principal occupants the belief in the community is that the Tamil real estates agents provided them these details; there are over a 150 of them. They must have learnt this lesson from the Sinhala goondas who attacked Tamil homes during the July 1983 racial riots; they too carried lists of addresses and principal occupants and such details as whether they were owners or tenants.

Funds were also collected through a number of other means from fairs, recitals and various other activities most of them organized by Tamil registered charities including the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization as well as, in recent times by the CMR/TVI (Canadian Multicultural Radio). These funds were intended to purchase the needs of the Tamil Tigers mostly arms. The whole community knew that funds were being raised for the Tigers often by duress, threat and intimidation and sums demanded were quite exorbitant.

In their reactions to the Human Rights Watch (HRW) Report, the CTC leaders not only showed their wrath and fury at the exposure but also their hurt feelings because the Tigers came under fire. There isn’t even the faintest doubt that the CTC is an LTTE front organization that succeeded the infamous FACT, the Federation of Associations of Canadian Tamils, an out and out Tamil Tiger federation.

When HRW Report was published Poopalapillai went even to the extent of claiming in a fit of emotional outburst thus: “This is my community; one that I have helped build in Canada for the past 20 years. This report makes me sick because it is saying that we are covering something up and our community is living in fear. In Toronto alone, there are 30 independent Tamil newspapers, three 24-hour radio stations, and three 24-hour Televisions stations. There is no veil of silence.”

Poopalapillai deprecated Jo Becker, the author of the report saying that she simply has her facts wrong. He was speaking for the Canadian Tamil Congress. His fatuous and foolish claim that it is a community that he helped build for the last twenty years is incredible; quite an egoistic expression of an inner chaos caused evidently by hallucinatory delusions. He was just another person in the community hardly involved in activities that served the interests of the society; after all he was strongly linked to the LTTE. .

Just like most other Tamil organizations and also the tabloids and radio and TV stations, the CTC was also a virulent pro-Tiger organization and some of its members, a few of them students, have visited Wanni as volunteers. Poopalapillai has every reason to have nightmares about the work the RCMP is doing in respect of arms purchase activities and how certain material and contraband goods were spirited to Wanni.

The Canadian Tamil Congress has no right to take on itself the right to speak for the Canadian Tamils. It has not earned that kind of status in the society and Poopalapillai is no leader either, and even more, to claim that he helped to build the community in Canada during the last twenty years is absolutely false; even amounts to fraud. Perhaps one can conclude that the claim and actions of David Poopalapillai is height of cheek.